Beyond Work Ethic: Religion, Individual and Political Preferences

Basten, Christoph; Betz, Frank

doi:10.2139/ssrn.2133848

Cited by 29 publications

(38 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…We also address the possibility that Catholics and Protestants are unequally distributed geographically, but that each group possibly tends to live in separate regions within Germany and that characteristics of regions could contribute some explanatory power to the regression models (Basten and Betz, 2013).…”

Section: Methodology and Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

Max Weber and the First World War: Protestant and Catholic living standards in Germany, 1915–1919

Blum

Strebel

2016

Journal of Institutional Economics

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We assess informal institutions of Protestants and Catholics by investigating their economic resilience in a natural experiment. The First World War constitutes an exogenous shock to living standards since the duration and intensity of the war exceeded all expectations. We assess the ability of Protestant and Catholic communities to cope with increasing food prices and wartime black markets. Literature based on Weber (1904, 1905) suggests that Protestants must be more resilient than their Catholic peers. Using individual height data on some 2,800 Germans to assess levels of malnutrition during the war, we find that living standards for both Protestants and Catholics declined; however, the decrease of Catholics' height was disproportionately large. Our empirical analysis finds a large statistically significant difference between Protestants and Catholics for the 1914-19 birth cohort, and we argue that this height gap cannot be attributed to socioeconomic background and fertility alone.

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Section: Methodology and Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

Max Weber and the First World War: Protestant and Catholic living standards in Germany, 1915–1919

Blum

Strebel

2016

Journal of Institutional Economics

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“…We discuss how our research supports, reconciles, and extends these arguments below. In other recent research, Cantoni, Dittmar, and Yuchtman (2015) find that locations where Catholic monasteries were closed saw human and physical capital reallocated away from church use (1517-1600) and Basten and Betz (2013) find differences in preferences in Switzerland along the border between historically Protestant and Catholic territories. For a review of the literature see Becker, Pfaff, and Rubin (2015).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 94%

State Capacity and Public Goods: Institutional Change, Human Capital, and Growth in Early Modern Germany

Dittmar¹,

Meisenzahl²

2016

FEDS

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What are the origins and consequences of the state as a provider of public goods? We study legal reforms that established mass public education and increased state capacity in German cities during the 1500s. These fundamental changes in public goods provision occurred where ideological competition during the Protestant Reformation interacted with popular politics at the local level. We document that cities that formalized public goods provision in the 1500s began differentially producing and attracting upper tail human capital and grew to be significantly larger in the long-run. We study plague outbreaks in a narrow time period as exogenous shocks to local politics and find support for a causal interpretation of the relationship between public goods institutions, human capital, and growth. More broadly, we provide evidence on the origins of state capacity directly targeting welfare improvement.

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“…9 Coexistence of cultures is a common phenomenon documented for many countries. A few examples are the US "melting pot", modelled in Bisin and Verdier (2000a), Switzerland multiple religions (Basten and Betz, 2012), Italys'North-South cultural divide (Putnam, 1993). union between countries.…”

Section: The Role Of Culturementioning

confidence: 99%

“…The new institutions have the potential to change fairly quickly and ideally mitigate the e¤ects of the clash due to the merging of cultures. 10 Our leading example is the Eurozone: the creation of the Eurozone is a shock to the type and frequency of interactions among agents with di¤erent cultures. In particular, we take Greece and Germany as the most salient exponents of two opposing cultures, and we will later document the cultural clash between them and its consequences.…”

Section: The Role Of Culturementioning

confidence: 99%

Cultural Differences and Institutional Integration

Guiso

Herrera

Morelli

2016

Journal of International Economics

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If citizens of di¤erent countries belonging to an economic union adhere to di¤erent and deeply rooted cultural norms, when these countries interact they may …nd it impossible to agree on e¢ cient policies, especially in hard times. Political leaders are bound to follow policies that do not violate their country's cultural norms. This paper provides a simple positive theory and a compelling case study of the Euro area crisis to highlight the importance of cultural clashes when economies integrate. We also provide a normative argument about the desirability of institutional integration: a political union, with a common enforcement agency, is the more bene…cial the greater is cultural diversity in an economic union.Keywords: Cultural Norms, Institutions, Euro Area, Crisis Mismanagement. JEL classi…cation numbers: D72This paper previously circulated under the title "A Cultural Clash View of the Euro Crisis." We thank two anonymous referees as well as Sascha Becker, Alberto Bisin, Serra Boranbay, Francesco Giavazzi, Gilat Levy, Assar Lindbeck, Elias Papaioannou, John Patty, Giacomo Ponzetto, Andrei Shleifer, Enrico Spolaore, Francesco Squintani, Livio Stracca, Sebastian Turban, Philippe Weil and participants at various workshops for great suggestions and comments. The usual disclaimer applies.

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Beyond Work Ethic: Religion, Individual and Political Preferences

Cited by 29 publications

References 24 publications

Max Weber and the First World War: Protestant and Catholic living standards in Germany, 1915–1919

Max Weber and the First World War: Protestant and Catholic living standards in Germany, 1915–1919

State Capacity and Public Goods: Institutional Change, Human Capital, and Growth in Early Modern Germany

Cultural Differences and Institutional Integration

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